


Tense

by IrreWilderer



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Massage, Non-Sexual Intimacy, solas-love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 00:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12947652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreWilderer/pseuds/IrreWilderer
Summary: Having had an emotionally exhausting day in the Emerald Graves, Solas seeks some time alone. Ma’ven intrudes upon his solitude, gives him a massage, and tells him what she loves about him and his body in a bid to make his day better. It leads to mixed feelings, guilt, confusion, and reaffirmed convictions.





	Tense

The sweat and blisters of battle braved were to be saved for another day. On this day, a Tuesday, the only thing gained had been another layer of failure. It clung to his limbs like filth. His lungs suffocated, armor chafed; skin itched as though each inch was an old scab. But worst was the wound at his heart.

Lore swore that the Emerald Graves’ trees marked the burial spots of elves. Romantic legend, truth, bullshit, or something in between: it didn’t matter. In each majestic, towering oak, Solas saw short lives spent quickly for his mistakes. Because of the well-intended, wrongful action of his hands, the elvhen had watched their time run out, empire crumble, and reality brought to ruin. Shadows cast by gnarled boughs; risen roots cracking the earth and bloodying heels: these hurts were caused by him, Fen’harel; The Dread and hated Wolf.

  
Solas couldn’t see the trees for the forest. He could not see what the elves had become because he knew what they had once been: proud; strong. And he certainly couldn't see the day's end come soon enough.

Situated by a little stream, stripped down to his leggings, Solas had a wash cloth attempting its work. His body felt… better. His back still ached, but the stench of perspiration was gone. His spirit did not feel very clean, however. Upon spotting Ma’ven wearing a cotton shift and bathed in sunset’s colours, he wondered if it ever would.

“What a gorgeous evening. I can’t believe how nice the weather is!”

Walking over smilingly, the Inquisitor looked fresh with her short hair washed and pushed back. A Dalish scarf was at her waist, and Solas knew that the favored scent of alyssum would be thick about her soft, newly-scrubbed skin. But hidden in her corners –at crook of neck and bend of arms– there would be warmth, too. Warmth like their bed and like their mingling breath. Warmth like the sunlight of day. Which, at the moment, was obscured by the leaves of a forest built on the graves of her people.

Squaring his shoulders, Solas was resolute. He refused to be distracted by Ma’ven’s talk or body, for he planned to brood the evening towards a dull twilight. He wanted to remember why he’d given his orb to Corypheus in the first place. He wanted to take the coiling guilt in his gut, unravel the rope of it, and braid it to renewed purpose. Blame; regret: he needed to be rid of these things for the sake of his endeavour. But under canopies of trees fed by the soil of slaughtered elves, Solas was only going to taste bitter remorse as he looked at Ma’ven who was just as wronged as the rest, and she deserved much more than his pensive mood. So Solas wanted to be alone.

“I thought for sure we’d get rain with this humidity,” Ma’ven kept on conversationally, her voice a boundless optimism. “Should be nice in the tent tonight, though. Until the bugs come out. Then we'll wish it _was_ raining.”

She hummed happily and jostled against his arm. A short-lived smile was all Solas could return, and it caused Ma’ven’s shoulders to fall in an instant.

“What is it?” With feigned enthusiasm gone, her true mood became clear. “Please talk to me. You said nothing at dinner. Or while we set up camp. I think you had Cole ready to burst before you came and hid here.”

“Exhaustion. That is all.” Solas grinned the old, practised grin that would have fooled most. Wolfish; ancient: a mask of ages passed. Ma’ven’s lips only pursed tighter.

“I know that voice,” she insisted. “The one from earlier, at least. That wasn’t wistfulness, it was pain. When you spoke of the elves building a life here, you said it would have been something to see, but you said it with such anguish that I—”

Solas smiled despite himself at her instinct, and because she’d noticed.

  
“Do not concern yourself with an old fool’s melancholy, Ma’ven,” he cautioned sincerely. “The effort far outweighs the reward. Return to camp. Relax from the day’s exertions. I will be to bed within the hour.”

“It’s no—! Solas, you’re not… Oh, love.“

Tenderly, Ma’ven reached towards the crest of his right cheekbone. When Solas went to turn away from her touch, her touch trapped his jaw and kept his gaze in hers.

“You’re not an ‘effort’,” she promised. Her thumb stroked his chin tenderly. “And you aren’t a burden. Stubborn bastard, maybe, but no burden.”

He affirmed with a half nod. Drifting from her hold, Solas walked a few feet and looked at the little river winding amid lily pads and dawn lotus. With the lush bank of grass rising from the water, and the treeline wild beyond that, it was a natural garden that his heart longed to enjoy. But bursts of red-orange embrium and burning prophet’s laurel soon became colourless as Ma’ven’s touch was a thing of hindsight. He returned to his loneliness, a black and white solitude.

  
“I apologize,” Solas said to the river, and to the oak, and to his beloved most of all. “It is... improper to be so entirely dour. Though there are remnants of the elves’ destruction here, the Dalish linger. Taven does his clan credit in his search for lost knowledge. Not all have forgotten, and that is… a comfort.”

“And not all will forget. Not when there’s you.”

With his back turned to her, Solas could allow himself a grimace. How he ached in times like these to tell her everything.

“I’ll see you in bed,” whispered Ma’ven, coming up behind and embracing around his middle. Solas leaned into it, readying for the meditative isolation he'd be left in. It would be woeful, but it was what was needed: time to think upon his cause, and to look at these trees for what they were instead of wallowing in distracting, ill-bought guilt.

  
But then Ma'ven gasped and he jumped.

“You’re so tense!” Ma’ven’s fingers skittered over the bare skin of his shoulders. They went about his ribcage as though walking a road, then became distracted with testing his spine. “Creators, you’re all knots. Is your back bothering you? You should have said something! Alright, lay out on the grass here. Before I go, I’m giving you a quick massage.”

Solas laughed joylessly at her insistence while she moved to where the lawn grew thicker. He had been so close to escaping her charitable concern. “Do not inconvenience yourself, vhenan.”

  
Ma’ven snorted. Glancing over her shoulder, her brow piqued formidably. “This is for me, actually. You snore when you go to sleep so tensed-up, and I’ve got Fairbanks’ people coming in the morning. I have to be awake early. It’ll just be a small healing spell, I promise. Here: I’ll put this down, get a little heat on your back, and then go.”

 

The woman untied her scarf of leaf motifs and silken green, and created a folded, pillowing pile for his head. Knowing the coddling would not desist until she was satisfied, Solas sprawled out with his stomach on the grass. The edges itched against his skin. The tips bit. Scratching wasn’t easy with his arms laid out along his side, so he suffered the annoyance with frustration. The digging of the jaw-bone at his breast went unnoticed, of course.

Ma’ven, meanwhile, narrated chattily while kneeling beside his lower back – “I am going to sit here” – and a soft stroke at Solas’s crown was meant as a comfort. “You just… relax,” she suggested, hands brushing over him. “Keep pouting, if you like. But there will be no snoring tonight. That’s a direct order from the Inquisitor, by the way.”

Her ministrations started at the thick muscle of his neck which seemed to hold all of him together for how overwhelming it felt once attended. Her fingers on the flesh there sent fast relief up through his neck to his head, and down his back to his tailbone, as though his body were a dry canal being filled by rocking, soothing waves. Just as quickly came the reveal of her true motive.

“Now, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Ma’ven asked.

Solas grunted. Her touch made him realize his tension. It wasn’t simply her ruse to get him complacent: he truly was physically sore. There was ache at his legs, irritation at his knees, and the feeling of prolonged use in his arms like he’d been shouldering the world. He felt so… stretched, pulled about; buried in his own body.

“Given that the ground is said to rise from the graves of elves, it is nothing unexpected,” he managed around another groan which sent hot breath into the scarf beneath his cheek. It was still warm from being worn.

“I suppose,” Ma’ven remarked from above. And then, thoughtfully, “I’m surprised you give that much credence to a Dalish story.”

Solas’s voice echoed emptily. “Literal or lore, the loss is no less real.”

“I know.”

She seemed defeated. Whether for his curtness or the truth, it was hard to tell. Huffing a little, her fingers set in harder, working down from the neck muscles. Ma’ven didn’t sound any happier when she spoke again. She was passive; uninterested. Offended, even.

“These shoulders are ridiculous; you know?”

Solas blinked. He’d expected – well. Not that. “Excuse me?”

He was met with a speculative noise. “I guess that would be news to you. But they are. They’re ridiculous. They’re… huge, really. And the freckles!”

He tried not to chuckle, but he failed.

“Brooding boys don’t giggle, Solas,” Ma’ven reminded him. The weight of fingers lightened to a trailing, sensual tickle. Her tone lost its edge. “I wonder: when do freckles stop being freckles and start being birthmarks? Or are they the same? You’ve got one here. And here. Down here. Then there are these two. I stare at these two when you are sleeping and have your back to me. They stand out from these ones— “she swiped across a patch of skin— “like two big stars among the rest. Stars burning above clouds of freckles on your pale, moon-lit skin. This here, though, is definitely just a mole. Hm.”

Solas’s brow furrowed at the intimate, poetic description of his shoulders. She was softening his heart, and he wanted it steeled. “I… Ma’ven, you have my appreciation, yet I must— “

  
She stopped him easily when he started to rise on his arms.

“’Must’ what? Insist something?” Her words ghosted hotly across his earlobe as she whispered. “I’m letting the knots do the talking, Solas, and they’re still there. Now hush.”

As firm easing swiveled up and down between his shoulder blades, he couldn’t help but disappoint her request for silence. There was a spot, a very specific one, that bothered him mercilessly at times. It usually pinched when—

“Mmm. Now, your back. Your back is one of the first things I noticed about you. It's so straight. You've got a beautiful posture, my love. So poised; so dignified.”

Ma’ven rolled her thumbs into that spot and Solas moaned. An exquisite popping caused him to rut against the ground as parts of him melted with a new awareness. He saw sparks across the dark of his eyelids. They settled through his body and buzzed and crackled.

“But your back is strong, too," the woman purred. "It would have to be. Strong from carrying around your belongings as you traveled, looking for new places to explore in and out of the Fade. Carrying the things you learned. The books you bought and then bartered away later. Your utensils, your change of clothes; your pelts. Plus that old set for preparing potions. All those things must have added up for your poor, wonderful back to carry. No back could carry all that—and the weight of your secrets.”

The sensation of intense physical satiation met with a swelling of guilt, and caused his throat to snap shut. Swallowing, choking, throat rolling as he tried to breath, Solas concentrated hard on her hands, attempting to relax so that Ma’ven might be convinced to leave him alone. Her continuing narration was charming and heart-felt. He felt it breaking his heart, in fact. How many times had she said she'd loved him? One hundred as they lay in bed, and another hundred as they walked the world. But Solas hadn't known how closely she'd watched, or how thoroughly she'd considered all of him, least of all something as mundane as his back.

“Such a nice spot to snuggle up to, too," Ma'ven kept on, hands working in tandem with her assertions. For every word, her hands writhed and wriggled at his anguish. "It’s—oh, this is embarrassing, but I remember after the first night we lay together, I woke up at some point and just stared at your back. I wanted to rest against it, get nice and close, but I was afraid of waking you up. I thought you would leave if I woke you. So I just watched. Here.” Her palm planted into the middle of his spine and pushed. His body responded by rippling blinding relief out to his arms. “This spot. You’d never seemed so real to me as you did then. That dawn was so bright.”

  
Solas swallowed again. “I’m sorry.”

His back was losing its hurts. His body begged the rest of him to succumb to her fine hands. But her words brought to light the divide of that moment she spoke of. It had been the Fade and its veil; his doing, and his crime. Solas' barrier had never been so malicious as that morning in keeping them apart. Something about how Ma'ven eased on his back and released the  strain had him swearing to never again sleep when instead he could be awake with her.

  
Solas keened deep and strange in his stomach. Ma’ven simply laughed at the apology. Her stroking became soft.

“Oh, don’t be!" she said. "You made it up to me the next morning. Not to mention— Hm. I’m going to sit on your legs, actually; this position is terrible.”

When she began once more, now lightly perched on the backs of his thighs, her fingers worked down to the dip of his spine. It hurt as friction fought the stress there where he seemed made of stone, and Solas sucked in air.

“Is that alright? Are you— You have to relax, Solas. Take deep breaths.” Ma'ven's fingers drew light trails to his tail-bone, wriggled in a circle, then moved back up a few inches. “Better. Heat will help.”

And it did. Her mana pooled and spilled a flood of warmth which disappeared as quickly as it had come, yet Solas’s eyes fluttered all the same. Fighting, faltering, it was a blissful sting of fire for just a second, but it made him aware of his lower back like someone suddenly remembering they were wearing amour. Amour which might be dismantled and set aside; forgotten while he…

“Mmm. This is another spot I admit to staring at, although I don’t apologize for it.” Again Ma’ven giggled, girlish and free. It distracted him completely from whatever he’d been considering. Had it mattered? “The curve of your spine. It’s like a promise; a prelude of better things to come if my eyes keep wandering. And I mean, these are practically dimples. Here. Right here.” She stroked out-ward from each side of his spine above his buttocks. “It’s like your ass is smiling at me.”

Solas laughed much louder than he’d meant to. When he reconsidered for a second time what she’d said, he laughed until tears were in his eyes.

  
“Well, that’s better!” Ma’ven sang from above.

But then where he had been warming –where the relief of his body had began to melt the ice of his mood– he felt himself freeze once more. Ma’ven had reached the bottom of his back; the end of her task. And she’d elicited a laugh from him, which no doubt convinced that he was in better spirits. Which, admittedly, he was. She'd torn him to pieces, some of which wanted to go with her to bed, and others which were resolved to contemplate his future. But Solas had never loved her more, regardless of what he knew he'd choose.

  
“Ma’ven,” Solas sighed gratefully, glancing over his shoulder at her, “ _thank-you_. This was more than I deserved.”

  
“And I’m far from finished!” Ma’ven answered to his surprise. Her grin was fiendish as she shuffled down further. Like there’d been no interruption, she continued, and Solas gasped, faced forward again, and then dropped his head in the soft, woven scarf as her fingers raked wonderfully over the curve of his bottom.

  
“Sadly, I don’t think these need much attention, no matter how much I wish they did. As I said: your ass is already smiling. Your legs, though; you’ve been doing as much walking as me, and mine have been killing me.”

  
While Solas started to reconsider wasting his night on useless guilt, Ma’ven’s kneading came light but focused. Thumbs found the dips of his thick leg muscles and outlined them with trails invisible to the eye but felt out to his toes. He was so accustomed to disregarding his physical needs, and now, as he became aware of them, she was wrenching pleasure from his pain. She was miraculous.

  
“Your legs are like your shoulders: _ridiculous_. The bulk of them! Not burly, but… sturdy. You’ve said you don’t feel much kinship with the elves, and when I look at your legs I’m really not surprised. I’ve never seen another of our kind with such legs. Which makes sense, really. I’ve never met another as well-traveled as you. These gorgeous muscles must have taken you far and wide for you to have seen what you’ve seen.” Palming the backs of his thighs, she pulled in short, repetitive motions. Her words, however, were felt much more than deftly flexing fingers.  “You’ve spoken of Orlais, Nevarra, Tevinter… but the most I ever saw with my clan was the Free Marches. Your legs have carried you to wisdom I would never have imagined before meeting you. Your legs must have taken you to deserts and coasts where you lay down and dreamed things beyond belief. These handsome, freckled, long legs— “

  
_Had been the first thing he’d been physically aware of upon waking from his deep rest. His legs had come to him as a cool draft tickled his ankles and sent vibrations to his brain already calculating and considering the next move. The orb of Fen’harel, with its guarded, sleeping, power, had lain not far from his side –just inches from his legs, in fact– and now…_

  
Now that power was even nearer.

  
Ma’ven’s marked hand hummed as she massaged Solas’s right foot. Upon realizing this, and remembering where he was, Solas gasped for air. The scent of his beloved came thick from the scarf beneath his cheek, and he gasped again, and again, and again. He started suffocating, each factor of the moment _–_ his memories, his mark on her hand; the scent of Ma'ven's scarf _–_ another finger wringing his throat.

  
“—but I won’t. I won’t make a joke about what foot-size is supposed to say about a man,” he heard beyond the thudding of his heart. Ma’ven giggled at her own humour which Solas only half understood. What he understood fully were the new tears in his eyes, and they were not from laughing as they had been before.

  
“Ma’ven, I— “

  
“Yep,” she concured, “time to turn over. Come on. I’m going to get your toes.”

As Solas tried to scramble for some reason which would give him space, Ma’ven pulled off and guided him to rolling over onto his back. He blinked against the lengthening evening dark, felt dizzy from the sky full of frantically spinning stars, but before he could speak, Ma’ven was into her monologue once more.

“Now, how these were not one of the first casualties of the Inquisition, I don’t know.”

He wanted to tell her to go. For one gloriously weightless second as she complimented his legs, Solas had been content and beautiful. But now Ma’ven seemed too close, his mistakes were closer than that, and his body was crushing his spirit by the weight of what it knew. The trees: they towered over-head, glared down; judged him with the silence of their sore, bent limbs. Still, his lover spoke, and Solas wanted to tell her to go; to leave and not look at him.

“When we were in Haven, I would stare slack-jawed at your poor bare toes all buried in the snow,” Ma’ven explained. She appeared ageless in the night's light, her vallaslin ink-black and eyes wide. “I remember you saying something quite self-congratulating concerning a spell, but I was still afraid they would freeze right off. I mean, I’d seen cold while living with the clan, and here came this city-elf with no shoes, and I just thought… I never thought to use magic like that. Dalish magic is practical, of course, but still not an every-day, personal-use kind of thing.”

Ma’ven was now gripping each of his legs in each of her hands, and stroking upward, spoiling the sides of his calf muscles. The burning in her hand had not subsided. It scorched him to his veins. But her ministrations still felt good. His body and mind warred. Solas was desperately overwhelmed.

“It was such a simple, little thing. A spell to keep your toes warm. But I was amazed. I’d never known anyone to have such a casual, close relationship with magic before! It was as though you didn’t even need to think about it. It’s like you and the Fade were the same thing. I ha— I had pitied you. For living so solitary. But you knew and understood more than I ever would, and I realized I’d judged you too quickly. Because of your feet! Isn’t that silly?”

It was not silly. Or simple. That such mundane knowledge _–_ no more wondrous than the ability to put on clothes _–_ had impressed her so strongly made Solas numb. He was unaware for a full minuet. He couldn’t even feel her touching him. The Fade should have been a part of Ma’ven like her own breath. Cold should have been nothing for her to repel, just as the heat should have been discarded by a cooling spell she didn’t even thought to cast _–_ it simply happened.

And yet. Solas’s last solace was that the woman was too intent on her work to notice his face now contorted by misery.

Perched lightly on his knees, Ma’ven’s fingers were dutiful soldiers creeping one by one towards his stomach, and then sprawling out over the skin poking out from the tops of his leggings. She caressed feather-light. Her nails tickled. The man trembled.

"You've... you won't be mad if I say you've put a bit of weight on here, will you?" Ma’ven bit her lip coyly. "I find it very attractive, honestly. When we first met, you looked as though you hadn't eaten in a hundred years. Skin and bones was all you were."

Scooting down, Ma'ven planted kisses about his belly not wholly metaphorical. Her lips sowed a garden. It was one that went wild. The roots expanded under his flesh and fed on darkness. She was nearly right; _painfully_ right: he'd hardly eaten in a hundred years at the time. Solas had been blood-seethingly ravenous upon waking for more than food, and his varying hungers had howled.

What had become of the elves left him malnourished. He'd been emaciated by the world's still-rampant slavery. Solas hadn't thought of that angry, starving need for some time. Not until now, when she'd reminded him. His loneliness and his hunger: hard to say which had been worse. But looking at Ma’ven, he knew.

"When we were in Halamshiral," she said, "you were so damned dignified," she remembered. "Until they brought out sweets." Ma'ven straightened and painted swirls above his belly-button as he shuddered. "You kept a straight face, of course, but when the kitchen-staff changed your breakfast to chocolate and pastries... I don't know. Your sweet-tooth is one of the few things you allow yourself to indulge in, and I like it. It's wonderful. Like all of you. Each part of you. Back, shoulders; toes..."

As Ma'ven drew a tingling line from his belly to his breast, Solas recalled those dainty pastries and the grisly past she did not know.

_Halamshiral, the eluvian it hid; and then, upon returning, watching –from a chair– his lover soundly sleep. He knew there'd be a day when he was gone to his cause, but he could not go to her now. He ate cake from a silver platter and cried quietly instead, Ma'ven smiling in her repose._

 

Solas felt tears sliding down the sides of his face and over his ears.

"Your chest is the best," Ma'ven hissed, dipping down; kissing it. "It holds your heart; your big, selfless heart, always so concerned with everyone else. Either making things better for them, or trying to understand them. Talking with the others; wanting to see why they think like they do. Your heart beats harder when you recite your poetry _–_ I've felt it. When you speak, your voice rumbles in your chest, and I love it." She rested her brow upon his breast. She crowned herself with him. "I love you. You'll do anything to make things right. You're a good man."

Then silence and stillness. Her words stopped, hands rested; body righted. Solas looked her in the eyes. Aloft, they were; the only things of colour as the moon washed the trees in the grey-shades of his conviction. Ma'ven left him loved, not empty. He was kingly to her; kind and imparting; his body a temple. Because she only knew his lies. Yet, if ever he explained the truth, Solas was sure she would not run.

 

'You'll do anything to make things right,' she'd approved. 'You're a good man,' she insisted. _I love you._

  
He broke.

Solas covered his eyes with his arm. His shoulders merely shook and jaw trembled, for he managed, for the moment, to be quiet. Until she lay again on his breast, so warm and perfect. Then he sobbed. He crushed her to him, one hand gripping her waist and the other clutching her hair. An indescribable release left Solas weightless, opened, and without walls. Yes, his body had ached, but the harrowing pressure within finally dissipated with every form-shaking howl and whimper he gave to her. Because Ma’ven was, with certainty, taking them. She took his sad, childlike sounds and turned them into a chorus of affirmation and love while she hushed him and kissed his breast.

Finally he calmed. His face was wet. He was clean, now. Solas felt new.

“Are you alright?”

The man took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “ _Yes_.”

When Ma’ven sat up, he held her at the hips. She would understand, in the days to come, why he walked the road he did. And if she understood, she would forgive.  
  
“Better,” Solas sighed. He squeezed her affectionately. “Much better. I… find myself in debt for a favor, however. Would you like to go to bed?”

Ma’ven’s eyes alighted. Then she tried for mischievous with a crooked, smirking look. “Yes. And do I ever have some ideas as to how you can repay me with this gorgeous body I just so loving described.”

The woman took one of his fingers and popped it teasingly in her mouth. After swirling her tongue and frenzying the man beneath, she spoke slowly; sensuously. “We’ll go to our tent. Lay down, so warm and ready. I’ll put my head on your chest. You can read to me for a while, whatever you like, and then we can sleep. And I’ll even be the big spoon.” She wriggled her brow and dropped the deepened tone “That sound hot enough for you?”

“That is all you wish?” Solas asked, surprised. Ma’ven nodded.

“Yes. It is."

They walked towards their bed, hands entwined.

 


End file.
